Prius RechargeIT 03 2008 at Google's campus

RechargeIT is one of five initiatives within

Google.org Google.org, founded in October 2005, is the charitable arm of Google, a multinational technology company. The organization has committed roughly US$100 million in investments and grants to nonprofits annually. The organization is noted for se ...

, the charitable arm of

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

, created with the aim to reduce CO₂ emissions, cut

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

use, and stabilize the

electrical grid An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:Kaplan, S. M. (2009). Smart Grid. Electrical Power ...

by accelerating the adoption of

plug-in electric vehicle A plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) is any road vehicle that can utilize an external source of electricity (such as a wall socket that connects to the power grid) to store electrical power within its onboard rechargeable battery packs, which then ...

History

Google's RechargeIT charging garage 2009

The RechargeIT initiative was unveiled in June 2007. As part of the program Google.org awarded US$1 million in grants and announced plans for a US$10 million request for proposals to fund development, adoption and commercialization of

plug-in hybrid A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is a hybrid electric vehicle whose battery pack can be recharged by plugging a charging cable into an external electric power source, in addition to internally by its on-board internal combustion engin ...

s, fully electric cars and related

vehicle-to-grid Vehicle-to-grid (V2G), also known as Vehicle-to-home (V2H) or Vehicle-to-load (V2L) describes a system in which plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) sell demand response services to the grid. Demand services are either delivering electricity or by red ...

(V2G) technology. As part of the program Google established a partnership with

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered in the Pacific Gas & Electric Building, in San Francisco, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 millio ...

to develop software for energy management. Together with the announcement of the initiative, Google also announced that it had switched on the

solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a photo ...

installation at its

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

headquarters in order to help the company reduce its

environmental footprint The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people or an economy. It tracks this demand through an ecological accounti ...

and also to power its plug-ins with clean solar electricity. At 1.6

megawatts The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Watt ...

the project became the largest solar installation at that time on any corporate campus in the U.S. and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. The actual rollout of the initiative took place in January 2008.

Google's carsharing program

By early 2010 Google's Mountain View campus had 100 available

charging station A charging station, also known as a charge point or electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE), is a piece of equipment that supplies electrical power for charging plug-in electric vehicles (including electric cars, electric trucks, electric ...

s for its share-use fleet of converted plug-in hybrids available to its employees through a free

carsharing Carsharing or car sharing (AU, NZ, CA, TH, & US) or car clubs (UK) is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. It differs from traditional car rental in that the owners of the cars are often pri ...

program and for those employees who drive to work in their

Tesla Roadster (2008) The Tesla Roadster is a battery electric vehicle (BEV) sports car, based on the Lotus Elise chassis, that was produced by the electric car firm Tesla Motors (now Tesla, Inc.) in California from 2008 to 2012. The Roadster was the first highway ...

electric car An electric car, battery electric car, or all-electric car is an automobile that is propelled by one or more electric motors, using only energy stored in batteries. Compared to internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, electric cars are quie ...

s. Solar panels are used to generate the electricity, and this pilot program is being monitored on a daily basis and performance results are published on RechargeIT's website.RechargeIT Driving Experiment
- ''RechargeIT is a program sponsored by Google.org, a non-profit created by Google''.

Driving experiment

In addition to the data collected for two years when the converted plug-ins were driven by Google employees, RechargeIT set up a controlled test using three conventional gasoline vehicles, two regular hybrids and two plug-in converted

Ford Escape Hybrid The Ford Escape is a compact crossover SUV sold by Ford since 2000 over four generations. The first generation was jointly developed with Mazda which also created the Mazda Tribute and Mercury Mariner as the twin model. Second generations of t ...

and

Toyota Prius The is a car built by Toyota which has a Hybrid vehicle drivetrain, hybrid drivetrain, combining an internal combustion engine with an electric motor. Initially offered as a four-door Sedan (automobile), sedan, it has been produced only as ...

. The results of the seven-week driving experiment for the converted Prius plug-in showed an average fuel economy of across all trips, and for city trips, the maximum reached for any of the driving conditions tested. A summary of the results of the seven-week driving experiment are the following

GFleet and employee shuttles

In order to reduce the

carbon footprint A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, place or product, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). Greenhouse gases, including the carbon-containing gases carbo ...

of its employees' commute and based on the results of the RechargeIT pilot, the company expanded its corporate carsharing program to create Google GFleet and also introduced shuttle buses powered with

biodiesel Biodiesel is a form of diesel fuel derived from plants or animals and consisting of long-chain fatty acid esters. It is typically made by chemically reacting lipids such as animal fat (tallow), soybean oil, or some other vegetable oil with ...

. In addition, more charging stations were deployed at the

Googleplex The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc. It is located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. The original complex, with of office space, is the company's second la ...

for employees owning

s. The initial GFleet was made of the converted plug-in hybrids from the RechargeIT initiative, and by mid-2011

Nissan Leaf The , stylized as LEAF, is a Compact car, compact five-door hatchback battery electric vehicle, battery electric vehicle (BEV) manufactured by Nissan. It was introduced in Japan and the United States in December 2010, and its second generation w ...

s and

Chevrolet Volt The Chevrolet Volt is a plug-in hybrid manufactured by General Motors, also marketed in rebadged variants as the Holden Volt in Australia and New Zealand and the Buick Velite 5 in China, and with a different fascia as the Vauxhall Ampera in t ...

s were added, expanding the

corporate fleet to more than 30 plug-in electric vehicles. In December 2011, the first production

Ford Focus Electric The Ford Focus Electric is a 5-door hatchback electric car that was produced by Ford. The Focus Electric is Ford's second production all-electric vehicle (the first being the Ford Ranger EV), and was made from December 2011to May 2018. The Fo ...

was delivered to Google and incorporated into the GFleet. By early 2012,

Honda Fit EV The second generation Honda Fit is a subcompact car or supermini manufactured by Honda from 2007 to 2014. It debuted on 17 October 2007 at the 40th Tokyo Motor Show. __TOC__ Overview The vehicle offered a longer wheelbase than its pred ...

s and

Mitsubishi i-MiEV The Mitsubishi i-MiEV (MiEV is an acronym for ''Mitsubishi innovative Electric Vehicle'') is a five-door hatchback electric car produced in the 2010s by Mitsubishi Motors, and is the electric version of the Mitsubishi i. Rebadged variants of t ...

s have also been added to the GFleet. The Fit EV was incorporated as part of Honda's field testing program of its upcoming electric car. Through the partnership Google will analyze the vehicle environmental performance including CO₂ reduction, energy consumption and overall energy cost. Employees who use the biodiesel shuttle system to commute to work at Mountain View, have the GFleet vehicles available for their errands, off-site meetings, and emergencies. Employees can also use GBikes, Google's on-campus bike fleet. As of June 2011, a total of 71 Level 2 chargers were added to the existing 150 Level 1 chargers, bringing the Googleplex total capacity to more than 200 chargers, and another 250 new ones are scheduled to be installed. Google's goal is to electrify 5 percent of the parking spaces—all over campus, free of charge to its employees. Daily, up to a third of Bay Area employees take the shuttle to work. The corporate coach fleet exceeds the

United States Environmental Protection Agency The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent executive agency of the United States federal government tasked with environmental protection matters. President Richard Nixon proposed the establishment of EPA on July 9, 1970; it be ...

's 2010 bus emission standards. The buses run on 5% biodiesel and are fitted with filtration systems that eliminate many harmful emissions, including nitrogen oxide. Google is testing solar panels on some to power air circulation, so that shuttles can turn off their engines while they wait for passengers, thus reducing fuel use and emissions. As of mid-2011, Google estimated that its Gfleet and biodiesel shuttle system resulted in net annual savings of more than 5,400 tonnes of , the equivalent of taking over 2,000 cars per day off the road, or avoiding 14 million vehicle miles every year.

References

External links

RechargeIT home page

Google.org RechargeIT: Plug-in Hybrids
by Google at YouTube. 15 June 2007.
RechargeIT: The Driving Experiment
by Google.org at YouTube. 22 July 2008.
Google introduces its G Fleet of Electric Vehicles
by Google.org at YouTube. 21 July 2011. {{DEFAULTSORT:Plug-In Hybrids In California Google.org Road transportation in California

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...